Less is more.

• Author: Riche, Martha Farnsworth
• Position: 'Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape our Future' by Ben J. Wattenberg - Book Review

Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape our Future, Ben J. Wattenberg (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004), 256 pp.

Like a Big Three automaker, Ben Wattenberg regularly rolls out a new version of his best-selling product. So here is the current incarnation of Wattenberg's 1987 Birth Dearth, itself retooled after its initial bow. What new features does this model have, and is it worth trading your old volume in for it?

Wattenberg was the first to publicize the modern trend toward lower fertility. Back then fertility had dipped below replacement levels in developed countries; we're now seeing this trend in those developing countries where women have, for the most part, gained control of their fertility. By and large, Wattenberg views with alarm a development many have spent their working lives to bring about, and one that is still not assured in large parts of the world.

Alarm is what the Wattenberg product has evolved toward, perhaps because earlier models didn't capture enough market share. Wattenberg's steady objective has been to wrest the population market from people who are concerned about population growth, the "alarmists." He's learned from that onetime market leader, Paul Ehrlich's Population Bomb, that alarm is the way to shift the public's mental model of population trends.

Wattenberg has never matched Ehrlich in writing the one book that changes the debate, but his attempts have put people concerned with the population aspects of global poverty and the quality of life on the defensive. Ironically, his help in reducing U.S. participation in women-empowering population programs in developing countries contributes to the new model of alarm: "fewer" really means fewer of Us--specifically, of the nations that share the ideals and practices of what is usually known as Western civilization.

I give Fewer full marks for discarding some of the offensive options that overloaded previous models. I recall a luncheon talk on "The Birth Dearth" that ended with Wattenberg urging "all you women" to go home and have babies. A few years later he was targeting potential grandparents: make your daughters have children, or you won't experience the joy of grandparenting. At least now he's not blaming, just fretting.

But how well does the book's nimble narrative of demographic data and methods represent demographers' understanding of the future implications of current demographic trends? Wattenberg made his argument at a 2004 meeting of...